The WWII women history forgot, brought back by a retired general
Maj. Gen. Mari Eder’s ‘The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line’ anchors a Veterans Day book series in Virginia.
Photo: U.S. Air Force · Public domain
Most of us can name a handful of World War II heroes. Almost none of them are women. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Mari Eder has spent years trying to fix that.
Her book, “The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line,” profiles 15 women of the Greatest Generation whose stories never made the textbooks: women who served, fought, struggled and made things happen during the war, both in uniform and out of it. Eder argues their legacy should embolden the generations of women who came after.
This month her book opens a speaker series for National Veterans and Families Month hosted by Cozy Calico Books, VFW Post 7916 and the Occoquan Historical Society in Occoquan, Virginia. The four-event series focuses on veteran authors and books that shed light on military and veteran life.
Books like Eder’s do more than fill gaps in the record. They give today’s women veterans a lineage.
There is something fitting about hearing these stories in a VFW post. For generations, women who served were left out of the rooms where veterans gathered, and some never called themselves veterans at all. Books like Eder’s do more than fill gaps in the record. They give today’s women veterans a lineage.
Read it with your book club this month, and ask the older women in your family what they did during the war years. Some of the best stories are the ones nobody thought to ask about.
